How to (hopefully) not fuck up your kids and get better at dad-ing.

Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett.

Admittedly, and I’m not ashamed of throwing this out there, the only reason I picked up Reaper Man was due to the fact that it was blurbed on the front cover by The Cleveland Plain Dealer (I am from Cleveland). At any rate, I had reached a literary impasse between two books and I needed something that would initiate a tie breaker and that was it.

In Reaper Man, the Grim Reaper finally gets a little time in the spotlight.

In this story,Death is essentially retired by the Auditors of Reality because he was beginning to develop a personality. However, since Death’s “untimely” dismissal from his superiors, Death realizes that he finally gets a chance to enjoy the thing that he has taken people away from for long: that’s right Death enjoy’s life.

There’s a problem though, the Auditors completely lack imagination and as such, they are unable to replace Death with a “new death”. Only the given species can do that. So while humankind drags it’s heels creating a new death, the collected spirits of the recently deceased build up because they don’t have anyone to usher them to the great beyond.

Nonetheless, this like any other book by Pratchett, is well worth the read.